Spectroscopic classification of ZTF20acplkub as a nova in M31
ATel #14184; Monika Soraisam (NCSA/UIUC), Kevin McKinnon, Rafael Nunez, Puragra Guhathakurta, Stephanie Figuereo (UCSC), Chien-Hsiu Lee (NOIR Lab), Sarah DeSantis (Steward), Tim Marquez (UCSB)
on 17 Nov 2020; 06:22 UT
Credential Certification: Monika Soraisam (soraisam@illinois.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Nova, Transient
Referred to by ATel #: 14198
We report the spectroscopic observation of ZTF20acplkub (RA 0h39m30.07s, DEC +40d31m0.88s) from the SALVATION project. The source was flagged from the ZTF public alert stream by a filter designed to find transients in M31 on the ANTARES alert-broker on 2020 Nov 11 UT (https://antares.noirlab.edu/loci/ANT2020aexkrsq).
On 2020 Nov 16 UT, we obtained the spectrum of this source with the Kast double spectrograph on the Shane 3 m telescope at Lick Observatory. The spectrum shows Balmer emission lines, with the FWHM of H-alpha around 1000 km/s, as well as emission lines of O I and Fe II. The lines are blue-shifted with radial velocity (based on H-alpha) around -500 km/s. The source is located near the SW major axis of M31, where the disk has a line-of-sight rotation velocity of about -200 km/s. This, combined with the -300 km/s systemic velocity of M31's center of mass, could explain the observed radial velocity of this source. Overall, its spectrum is thus consistent with a nova in M31.
